Voices of Sport: Helen Rollason - The first female presenter of Grandstand who moved millions with courageous cancer battle

In our weekly series, Yahoo Sport’s Nick Metcalfe features a famous voice of sport. This week, the BBC presenter Helen Rollason goes under the spotlight.

Helen Rollason will always have her own special place in the history of television sports coverage in Britain. She was the first female presenter of the BBC’s long-running Saturday programme Grandstand, previously a bastion of maleness. She became a familiar face in the 1980s and 1990s, at many of the biggest sporting events and home and abroad. And when she sadly faced her own battle with cancer at a young age, she did so with great bravery and dignity and moved millions of people in the process.

Rollason loved sport from a young age. She was a member of Bath Athletics Club, and played hockey for Somerset. For a few years after university, she was a PE teacher. But her heart was always in pursuing a career in broadcasting.

In many ways, she did it the old-fashioned way. She first did screen tests for the BBC, but didn’t manage to gain an audition. She became a volunteer presenter for Basildon Community Radio in 1980. It was a humble way to start a broadcasting career that took her to the very top.

Rollason then joined Essex Radio, where she soon became deputy sports editor. And three years later she became a producer and director for Cheerleader Productions, helping to make content for the new Channel 4 that included the 1985 Super Bowl. She also worked on the Davis Cup final and the US Masters, in the days before the Augusta major was screened by the BBC.

It was already becoming clear that Rollason was destined for big things. She decided to become a freelance reporter, and the jobs kept coming. She covered the 1987 World Student Games for ITV and the 1988 World Junior Athletics Championships for Channel 4. Later in 1988 came the greatest sporting show of them all, the Olympic Games in Seoul, where Rollason was part of the ITV team. This remains the last time the Olympics were shown on a free to air channel other than the BBC.

Rollason just had such a natural manner about her – like all the best broadcasters, she made working in television look very easy. It wasn’t surprising that during this time Rollason was catching the eye of the BBC. She joined Newsround, the children’s programme that had been on our screens at teatime since the early 1970s. More sport was covered on the programme, and viewers became used to Rollason presenting special features on topics like gymnastics and female jockeys.

In 1990 Rollason switched to BBC Sport. And in May of that year, she was the first female to present the BBC’s flagship Saturday afternoon programme, Grandstand. Generations of viewers had grown up with the likes of David Coleman, Frank Bough, Des Lynam and Steve Rider.

[VOICES OF SPORT: RON PICKERING]

[VOICES OF SPORT: JOHN ARLOTT]

Watching the programme was a ritual for millions. Grandstand brought us a selection of sports every weekend, including major events throughout the year like rugby’s Five Nations, the FA Cup final at Wembley and Wimbledon. And now Rollason was in the hot seat. These were her opening words:

“Good afternoon, nice to be with you. After a frantic week of football, we’re calming down a little this afternoon. Just a little, we’ve got plenty of soccer action, but we’re focusing on horse racing and tennis.”

Viewers tuning in for their weekly fix liked Rollason from the start. Her authority and charm were ideal for the programme. Years later, as Grandstand celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1998, Rollason recalled that first broadcast:

“On the day I came in, all the security staff waited for me as I came in in the car, and they gave me a little salute and a thumbs up, and that was a nice feeling to start with. I can remember my knees knocking against the desk. I knew there was quite a bit of deep suspicion at a woman taking on such a mantle. I was in awe of people like Frank, and Des, and Steve, and David Coleman. And to be sitting in that chair and to hear that music going that you’ve watched since you were a tiny kid, and loved, was a little bit daunting to say the least. But I did enjoy the programme very much. It was a lovely day.”

More female presenters followed where Rollason led. It wasn’t long before Sue Barker and Clare Balding also fronted Grandstand. In time, there were females presenting, and indeed commentating, on the BBC’s famous weekend football programme, Match of the Day. Men still dominate the landscape, but times have changed significantly in recent decades.

Rollason also became a familiar face presenting Sport on Friday. I would say that is one of the most forgotten of all sporting programmes from the BBC, perhaps because it aired in the afternoons. But its staple diet of live indoor sports like snooker and bowls, racing, football highlights and features were certainly a winning combination for those of us who tuned in on a weekly basis.

As the 1990s went on, Rollason was a regular feature at the very biggest sporting events. She worked at the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992, and then again in Atlanta four years later. In between she was part of the BBC team at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria. In the nicest possible way, Rollason was becoming part of the television furniture.

It may seem hard to believe for today’s younger viewers used to blanket coverage of Paralympic Games in London and Rio, but two decades ago it was a very different story. We would be lucky to see a few clips from the Games. Rollason was key in setting the ball rolling towards a changing mindset to the event when she covered the 1996 Paralympics.

In fact, after a poor Olympics that only produced one British gold for rowing great Steve Redgrave, Rollason said we should now enjoy the “real” Olympics. And as the later Games finished, she was critical of the way Atlanta had welcomed the Paralympic movement, her strong complaint being that it had not treated the event seriously enough. From the Paralympics four years later in Sydney, the Games has simply gone from strength to strength.

The speed of Rollason’s ascent to the top of broadcasting was testament to her qualities. In 1996, she was named as the Television and Radio Industries Sports Presenter of the Year. No mean feat when you consider the likes of Lynam and Rider were still at the top of their game.

But tragically Rollason was to fall ill, just at the time that her career was hitting the heights. While presenting the sports bulletins on BBC Breakfast News in 1997, she complained of acute tiredness and discomfort. Rollason was diagnosed with cancer and told she only had three months to live.

That never proved to be the case, as she bravely fought the disease for two years. She carried on working, even while she was having chemotherapy, presenting sports bulletins for BBC News, and writing a column about her illness for the Sunday Mirror Magazine. The truth was she simply loved her work too much to think about stopping.

The public were clearly inspired by her courageous fight, and she won even more support after a special edition of the BBC’s QED series was screened in 1998, called “Hope for Helen”, which followed Rollason as she underwent a course of treatment.

The BBC revamped its Six O’Clock News programme in the spring of 1999, and Rollason started presenting a weekend sporting preview every Friday. Her last on-screen appearance was in June of that year, while the following month she was at Buckingham Palace to pick up an MBE for her services to broadcasting and charities.

Her work on television was well known to millions of course, but less so her charity work. Among her many achievements was the raising of £5m for a cancer wing at North Middlesex Hospital, which was named in her honour.

Rollason died in August, 1999. She was only 43. The BBC aired a special tribute programme called Helen Rollason: The Bravest Fight. Her autobiography, Life’s Too Short, was published in 2000.

The BBC established a new award for its annual Sports Personality programme. The Helen Rollason Award was handed to sportspeople who had shown “outstanding achievement in the face of adversity”. The first recipient was retired National Hunt racing trainer Jenny Pitman, who was herself diagnosed with cancer.

Later winners included yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur, who became the fastest female to circumnavigate the globe, former footballer Geoff Thomas for his incredible marathon bike rides to raise money for leukaemia and the competitors at the inaugural Invictus Games, a multi-sport event for sick and injured service personnel. It’s clear that this would have all meant so much to Rollason.

The Helen Rollason Cancer Charity was established in 1999 – to this day it funds and operates cancer support centres in Essex, Hertfordshire and London.

Her name very much lives on, and when fellow presenters talk about Rollason, you can see how popular she was, and how much they were inspired by the determined way she fought cancer.

It is truly so sad to think we lost Rollason at such a young age. Even now, she would only have been 60 and would almost certainly still be on our screens, guiding us through many of our much-loved sporting occasions.

But we do have a consolation – with the clips we can watch and the memories we have of tuning in. That’s the point of this series really. We may not personally know people on television, but they play a part in our lives. A permanent fixture in the corner of our living rooms.

We may have only watched Rollason for a decade or so, but it’s not just about quantity. She really made an impression on us. And she is still remembered with real affection.